The Loudest Lie
by treacle-antlers
Summary: We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves. HouseCameron


**Title: **The Loudest Lie

**Pairing: **House/Cameron

**Spoilers: **_From 1.15 'Mob Rules' through 1.22 'The Honeymoon' _

**Summary: **"We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves" - Eric Hoffer

**Author's Note: **If you like it tell me, but I'll write it even if you don't. It's not as if I have a choice.

**X**

"Have you seen House's new car?"

Wilson's voice lifts high above the banal chatter and the tone of it, the careful annunciation of each syllable, makes his blood run cold. Staring accusingly at the bottom of his styrofoam coffee cup, House conjures up a deeply unpleasant and protracted case of the clap and wills it down upon the genitals of his best friend. A plague on all his houses.

"No. Although I'd heard." Cameron's smile is curious, her perfectly shaped eyebrows quirking upwards in an amused frown. "He hasn't mentioned it though."

"Maybe he didn't think you'd be interested."

He knows Wilson is smirking now. He can smell it.

"You should get him to take you out for a spin later. We were out in her last night. You know, there's nothing like a drive in a convertible on a warm summer's evening. Is there House?"

"Wow. A convertible?"

Her mouth is a perfect pink rose as she holds back a laugh and he knows what she's thinking now, knows what she thinks the joke is. And it's the perfect out.

"Yeah, and it's all shiny and red and stuff." Meeting her eyes for the first time that day, his expression is a perfect parody of youthful lust. "Man I am going to get _so_ much tail in this baby!"

This time the eyebrow lift is accompanied by the crooked little smile. The one that made him want to smack her upside the head with his cane. Or something. Moving her empty carton onto her tray - _and oh my god! milk?_ - she ducks her head at Wilson and, no, he doesn't imagine it; they share something. A split second flicker, knowledge passing between them, faster than light.

She moves away and he looks down at his friend's watch. A new Breil. Not particularly expensive. And not something that he'd ever buy for himself. Not something Julie would have gotten for him either, her tastes were a little more refined. But it's new. And it's a gift. From someone. Watching the second hand sweep smoothly around the dial, House wonders if he could get the thing off his wrist and jammed down his throat before it reaches twelve.

"Why didn't you..."

"Who got you the watch?"

Frowning irritably, Wilson lifts his wrist an inch or two from the table and stares at it as if he'd forgotten it was there.

"Uh...Jules. Birthday present."

The eyelash flicker is his tell.

"Liar." House says.

**X X**

"House thinks I'm the one who ratted him out to Vogler."

Chase's fringe is covering his eyes, his head bowed low over a gel. His voice is low, angry even, but there's something else. A boyish, sulky undertone that makes her ask the question first in her head before she says it out loud.

"Why do you say that?"

"He told me." Lips purse and he shoots her a look, "Did he say anything to you?"

His eyes stay on her for a second longer than they need to but, when her face starts heating up, he looks away.

"Why would he say anything to me?"

Chase shrugs, "Dunno. Just thought he might have."

His hand moves steadily, from gel to microscope and then back again, the smooth indifference of his expression reminding her of a soap actor. Perfect, flawlessly handsome profile and that self-consciously intelligent expression. Moving back to her own work-station, Cameron picks up a slide and tries to focus, but he's in the corner of her eye now. A sulky white flake in her peripheral vision.

"Maybe he was just testing you."

"Didn't test Foreman." A deliberate pause, "Or you."

"No." She doesn't want to say it, but he's pushing her. She leans forward to look through her 'scope. "Although I guess he thinks I wouldn't have any reason."

"Oh no. Course not."

"Meaning?"

"Because you fancy him."

She stares him down, grey blue eyes warning him. "Because _I_didn't screw up."

"Right."

He's sullen now and she's sorry. Smiling gently she reaches to touch his wrist. Just a small gesture, but it's enough. He looks down at her fingers and frowns.

"Sorry."

She shrugs, "If it's any consolation, I think he's wrong."

The turn of his head is just a shade too quick, his eyes just a little too grateful and she knows now. Knows even without him saying another word. And, for the first time ever, she wishes him ill. Wishes to God this will come back and bite him on the ass real soon. Or better still, that House will.

"It wasn't me."

:Liar: Cameron thinks.

**X X X**

Her eyes are never cold, and no matter how angry she thinks she is and how hard she tries to freeze him out, he knows it's never anything more than pond-ice. Quarter-inch thick with warm water flowing just under the surface.

She doesn't look away though, he'll give her that, and he can psyche out the best of them. She's a lot of things, but she isn't lacking in balls. It was one of the things he noticed when he interviewed her. That and the way that, after she'd stood up to shake his hand and left, his office seemed way darker than usual.

The idea that she should be the one to go, over Foreman and that Ass-Kisser Chase, gives him a deliciously perverse sense of pleasure. Like self-harming. He can almost see her face as he tells her; confusion, naked pain and then...the ice-cold fury. Her small hands clenched at his sides, a glimpse of her ivory breasts through her open shirt-collar. Heaving with passion.

After that it goes into montage and later, when Wilson asks him what's on his mind, the whole thing unspools into his lap.

_The line of her slender, pale neck as she leans past him for the coffee pot, her skin smelling like kiwi-fruit. Her lips curving in a smile, replying to Foreman's retort. Oblivious of him standing there, inhaling her scent as he talks, like a hormone-ripped hound dog. _

_Her face as she sits at his desk, smoothing out a letter before she reads it aloud. Her forehead creased with the tiniest of frowns, a strand of the thick, molasses-taffy hair that she twists and pulls into order, curling against her jaw. As she reads, he watches her, knowing that, were she to look up, she'd guess in a second. Dumbstruck with momentary lust and by the sight of her profile in the dim lilac light of his office. _

_His waking fantasy. The late night one. She enters through the glass door, lab coat still on, tired and the hair unfettered, tumbling messily over her narrow shoulders. Her eyes are full of blank need, devoid of that pleading he finds to difficult and, without a word, she walks to him. Slides one thigh either side of his. Brings her groin into hard, hot contact with his own. her breath is meadow-sweet; sunlight, soap and lollipops as she reaches for his hands, pushes them, splayed up and under her shirt. _

"House?"

He blinks, looking down at his hands as the scenes evaporate. Frowns and drains his coffee.

"Patient. I should get back."

Wilson's eyes narrow curiously as he gets to his feet.

"Liar!" he calls at his back as House walks away.

**X X X X**

She stays quiet for the longest time. Until their first course arrives, which of course necessitates that at least one of them speak, if only just to thank the waiter. Not because she doesn't have anything to say, or because she's trying to formulate just the right reply, but because she wants to give him time to think about what he just said to her.

"I didn't ask you what you thought. I asked you how you _felt _." Picking up her fork, she spears a length of asparagus and cuts through it with deft precision, before transferring it to her mouth.

"I thought you wanted me to _be myself _."

There is a note of apology in House's eyes, although she's fairly sure he doesn't want it to be there.

"I got you a corsage, so what? You want heart-shaped candy too? 'Finally we're alone and I may share the love that dare not speak it's name'? I'm here because you wanted me here." He cocks his head to one side and stabs ruthlessly at his plate. "And maybe for the puttanesca."

His tie is on too tight and, ducking her head a little to look under the table, she sees that his usual black Nikes have been replaced by loafers. The toe of his left foot is tapping a fast staccato rhythm again the table leg and, raising her eyes to his again, Cameron can't help but smile at the expression on his face. Accusatory, irritable and deeply uncomfortable.

"You can't fix me."

"Maybe not." She takes a sip of her wine, swallows. "But maybe it's not you that needs to be fixed."

"Of course!" He rolls his eyes, forks in another mouthful. "It's not _me _, it's this crazy cock-eyed world of ours."

"I was talking about me."

His hand is frozen halfway back to his plate.

"You say I need to fix everything. Make it right. Well maybe that was true. Once. Maybe that _was _the reason I..." It's hard to admit, but she knows he's right about that part. She hesitates, trying to make the connection for him, "But now..."

His smile is worn-thin, sardonic, and he lays down his fork, picks up his wine glass as if to join her in a toast.

"Don't tell me. Let me guess. Is it Hallmark? Can our two broken hearts make a whole?"

She sighs and suddenly it all seems so sad. Futile. Like two moths burning themselves over and over on a candle flame. He thinks she pities him, but he couldn't be more wrong. It's her who needs his pity, his compassion, his strength. It's her who needs to be healed.

Picking up her cutlery, she shrugs. Pushes it underneath again, hiding it, back where it belongs, but he's looking at her face and nothing hides from him.

"I'm sorry," he says quietly and clears his throat, his eyes already somewhere else. Looking at the door. At everyone else but her.

"Liar" she says quietly.

**X X X X X**

"I spoke to Allison Cameron earlier."

Stacy's voice is careful, her words perfectly weighted to convey a sickening level of - what? Amusement? Intimacy? Disinterest? None of them ring true. Instead she just ends up sounding like his mother. It's not a quality he finds particularly alluring.

"Don't tell me. '_You like her_'."

Something crackles between them, something bitter and cold. Ugly memories that he'd rather leave buried under all the good ones.

"I do." She smiles and he knows that she remembers too. "She's interested in you."

He can't disguise it. Not from her. So he doesn't even try.

"I know."

"And are you?"

"Am I what?"

Her smiles widens, or maybe it just deepens. Certainly the wound does, the knowledge that she can still make him act this way. Defensive of something he has no reason to defend. Shaking his head wryly, he looks down at the floor, draws his cane back to his shoulder in a smooth swing. Sweet. Straight down the middle.

"She has...something."

It's the closest he's come to saying what he means. What he feels. _I want to know how you feel about me. _She has something. Something he knows he's lost. Something warm and bright and soft.

"Are you in love with her?"

The putt goes south and, without knowing how or why, he's thrown off balance. Not much, but enough, and he knows she notices, because that's what she does. She notices. They have that in common.

Her hand is resting inches from his, fingertips grazing his wrist and he knows she's shaking a little. Deep down inside where it counts.

"No."

He says it carefully, his eyes lingering on hers. Making contact. And he means it. He believes it. Right up until she bends her head towards his, dark hair shading a fragile smile.

"Liar" she says softly.


End file.
